Saturday, January 3, 2015

Lost in Revision

Happy New Year peeps; I haven't been around in a while but I swear there is a good reason. (One of the members in my mother's Canasta group came down with podagra and I was forced to sub in--cuz the Canasta must go on.) Besides that, I am--as the title of this post indicates--lost in the last revision of ABSOLUTION, the first book of the Jesuit Thriller series. Seeing as that this is the ultimate revision before Liz (ueberagent Liz Kracht) shops it sometime this winter, I am giving it my all, sparing nothing--including attention to personal hygiene. So, to keep you folks from getting restless, I am re-posting a blog I wrote last year. If you already read it, why not give Canasta a try--my mother is still looking for a few good players. If you somehow missed it, clear your schedule for the next ten minutes and settle in to your armchair. Happy New Year!

It
was about ten years ago and we were in the middle of arctic front that
lasted about eight days. From what I can remember, there were three days
when the temperature never got above -10 degrees. Now, you smart
people out there will realize this would be a good time to hunker down
by the wood stove and settle in to a good book. But I was young (still
less than 40) and foolish (those of you who know me well will have no
trouble believing that.) And so I snowshoed up the second highest
mountain in Vermont that day, Killington Peak, when the temperature at
the base was -12 degrees Fahrenheit, and the summit was -20 and whipped
by a COLD wind.

In
the following years I have thought much about that day, and when the
quintessential Vermont artist Peter Huntoon asked me to write a short
story for his website, that day under the cold January sun came right to
mind. I have always loved paradoxes, and the idea that the sun (which
is 27 million degrees F at its core--although only a cool 10 million F
at the surface) could be cold appealed to me greatly. But I can assure
you it was a very cold sun staring at me on that day 10 years ago.

So,
here's the story on which Peter based his painting. I have
fictionalized it slightly--I don't own a truck and my snowshoes were
made of plastic and aircraft-grade aluminum--but, for the most part,
it's entirely accurate. Hope you enjoy it.

Under the Cold January Sun

The
sun lifted over Killington Peak to the east, marking the start of another cold
January day. The man loaded up the wood stove with the last of the apple wood
he had stashed on the porch, and waded through the snow in the backyard to
fetch the wheelbarrow. It was a quiet morning in the valley; all he could hear
was the crunch of his boots underneath him and the rattle of the beech leaves
in the hedgerow behind his house. Apple smoke wafted in the gathering breeze,
mixing with the sweet odor of rotting hay from the farm next door.

When
the porch was filled again—this time with the maple he had removed from his neighbor’s
roof—he passed back inside to the intoxicating warmth of his kitchen and
readied his backpack, as Gracie looked on from her usual spot on the throw rug
halfway between the stove and the slider that overlooked her territory. He tucked
the last of the supplies into the sack, tightened the cord and headed for the
door with his yellow Lab at his heels.

His
old truck complained bitterly about the cold, but turned over in the end, and
forced its way through the snow that had fallen before the arrival of the
arctic front. He turned onto the highway and headed up the pass, the lone
vehicle foolish enough to brave the cold. The Wheelerville Road loomed ahead on
his right, a single lane running next to the brook that gave it its name, and
he turned on to it and stopped to lock the hubs into four-wheel before resuming
his way. At the sharp turn marking the beginning of the Notch road he swung
into the parking lot for the Bucklin trailhead.

It
took him two minutes to lace on his shoes—a pair of Tubbs fashioned from ash
and catgut—but his fingers were frozen stiff by the end and he was happy to
shove them into the welcoming warmth of his mittens. He collected Gracie and
his rucksack from the cab and started off, shoeing steadily up the flat section
of the trail that skirted the North Branch of the Cold River, which gurgled
noisily under the ice. A mile up the trail he crossed the river on a
thick floe of ice that resembled the Champlain Bridge and started up the steep shoulder
that led to the mountain.

Halfway
up the ascent he stopped to pull off his wool sweater and swap his mittens for
a light pair of gloves. Gracie sat in the snow as he changed, calmly surveying
the nearby pines for something to chase. But the squirrels were all tucked
away, the grouse were huddled together out of sight, and even the hares weren’t
foolish enough to venture out on such a day.

He
reached the top of the shoulder around mid-day, arriving at Cooper’s Cabin as
the cold sun arrived at its zenith in the sky. Gracie padded inside, and he
followed her in and deposited his rucksack on the old picnic table. Lunch was
simple—a PBJ for him and two pieces of dried venison for Gracie—and quick; not
even five minutes had elapsed before they went back out, leaving his shoes and
pack in the cabin to be retrieved later. But it was all he could afford;
already the cold—his thermometer registered a chilly fifteen below, without the
wind chill—had penetrated beneath his clothing and hooked the flesh beneath
with its icy claws.

The
last half-mile of the climb was all that remained, a steep chimney of rock hewn
out of the back side of Killington Peak. He had climbed it a hundred times before,
and knew every stony step. It amazed him that a dog as big as Gracie could
negotiate the narrow pitch, but she made easy work of it, stopping often to
gaze back at him with her watchful eyes. Half-way up the birches petered out,
giving way to the scrub pines that lined the
trail. The problem was that he was six-feet and then some, well above the protection
the shrubs provided from the bitter wind, which increased with every foot he
ascended.

He
reached the top and celebrated in his normal fashion, with a piece of dark
chocolate and a biscuit for Gracie. It was his wont to linger up top and
appreciate the view, but the thermometer registered 20 degrees below zero, and
the wind whipped the exposed peak with a hatred centuries in the making. He
could feel the heat draining from his body, and knew he had to get off the peak
in short order.

A
bit of panic set in and he started off too fast, loosing his footing on an
ice-covered root. He slid ten feet or so, and came to an abrupt stop, bruised
but not broken, inside a dense thicket of pine branches. Gracie came back right
away, looking him over with her chocolate eyes to make sure he was okay.

It
was a full hour before he returned to the cabin, and he was chilled to the bone.
The cost of a safe passage had been time and exposure, and the price had been
as steep as the rocky chute itself. He collected his gear, donned everything he
had stowed in the pack—wool sweater, Caribou-hide hat, and Gore-Tex mittens—and
tied on his shoes.

It
was an easy descent down the long shoulder and that was the problem—it was too
easy. He hadn’t realized he had built up a sweat on the way up, but he realized
it now as the thin layer of water froze on his skin, chilling him further and
stiffening his gait. Worse still, the wind had changed to the west, whistling up
the slope with a ferocity that discharged the snow from the trees and warmth
from his body.

There
was only one thing to do; he needed to go back up. And up he went, slowly at
first, and then a little faster as the burning calories defrosted his skin and
made movement a bit easier. After several hundred yards he could feel the
stinging in his fingertips and his toes burned like an oil-soaked log. In another
few minutes the pain resolved with the return of his circulation, and he turned
around again to face the wind.

It
was dark when he arrived back at the trail head, a consequence of his pop-goes-the-weasel
descent. The truck turned over first time, and he sat in the cab and warmed up before
braving the road. He parked in the rickety old barn behind the house and
grabbed a few sticks of firewood as he went in, dumping them onto the dying
embers lining the floor of the wood stove.

The
smell of venison stew permeated the kitchen, bubbling up from the Crockpot next
to the old sink. He divided it into two equal parts, put Gracie’s on the pine board
floor, and sank into armchair next to the stove. His brother had given him a
bottle of porter for Christmas, and he drank this in accompaniment to the stew,
the warm comfort of the kitchen, and the crackling of the fire.

Gracie
finished her meal and plopped down on her rug, and they drifted off to sleep,
putting a fitting end to a good day under the cold January sun.

I
hope you enjoyed the story and I am sure you enjoyed the painting. For
those visiting my blog, please check out My Website and sign up for my blog. I can also be found on #wattpad, where
I am writing a serialized novel about the life of a medical intern
(called, imaginatively, The Intern). Please click on the link and check
it out. (My mother has given it a good review!) The Intern

Thanks again
to Peter Huntoon. I appreciate the opportunity and I love the painting.
If you want the chance to bid on the painting, or check out some of
Peter's other original artwork, here is his WEBSITE.

Thanks for your support, peter

Peter Hogenkamp is a physician and author living in Rutland, Vermont. Peter's writing credits include ABSOLUTION, the first book of The Jesuit thriller series; THE LAZARUS MANUSCRIPT, a stand-alone medical thriller; and The Intern, a serialized novel based loosely on Peter's internship, published bi-weekly on #Wattpad. Peter can be found on his Author Website as well as his personal blog, PeterHogenkampWrites, where he writes about most anything. Peter is the founder and editor of Prose&Cons; a frequent contributor and reviewer at ReadWave; the founder and moderator of groups on Facebook (The Library), Google+ (Fiction Writers Anonymous); and a Beta-reader at StoryShelter. Peter also created and judges a #bestfirstparagraph contest for #NaNoWriMo; entries may be submitted 12/1/14 - 12/31/14 on the Fiction Writers Anonymous feed. Peter tweets--against the wishes of his wife and four children--at @phogenkampvt and @theprosecons. He can be reached at peter@peterhogenkamp.com or through his literary agent (Liz Kracht of Kimberely Cameron & Associates) at liz@kimberleycameron.com.